Thursday, December 31, 2015

No. 2 Alabama is a
10-point favorite over No. 3 Michigan State in tonight’s Goodyear Cotton Bowl,
the nightcap of the College Football Playoff doubleheader on ESPN.

Some dude named Stewart
Mandel, a college football writer for Fox
Sports,seems to have gotten
his knickers in a wad
because “the powers that be at the playoff kowtowed to the Rose and Sugar Bowls
and exiled the semifinals to New Year’s Eve.”

He even took to his
Twitter account asking his followers if their plans for New Year’s Eve would
keep them from watching one or both of the semi-final games being played
today. The results were less than
compelling. Of the 5,443 people who
responded, 35% said their plans would indeed interfere with watching the game. I have to say that there are enough people out
there who have the ability to simultaneously ring in the New Year and watch their beloved team on TV. Some are even lucky enough to make the trip
to Arlington, TX and Miami to see the game in person.

When the BCS was
ditched and replaced with the CFB, the Rose Bowl and Sugar Bpwl were
essentially kicked to the curb. Let them
have their little “tradition”.

As a rabid Alabama
Crimson Tide fan, I can think of no better way to ring in the New Year than by watching
my beloved Bama boys take on the Spartans of Michigan State. I get that the Rose Bowl, dubbed the
“Granddaddy of them all”, has a 100-year-old tradition complete with a parade
before the game. I have no problem with
the Rose and Sugar Bowls retaining their “place of honor” on New Year’s Day.

Not everybody wants
to dress up and go out to ring in the New Year.
Like many others, we here at Casa de Curmudgeon, have planned a
yuuuuuuge college football party replete with decorations that just ooze Bama Nation team spirit,
all the traditional “tailgate” food and drink and three widescreen TVs so that
everybody can watch the game in comfort.
Celebrating beating Michigan State while ringing in 2016 with friends is
most excellent if you ask me.

The dynasty at
Alabama is not dead and tonight Bama
is going to prove it. There’s no need to
quote stats or repeat what Coach Saban or Coach Dantonio said in their press
conferences this week. What matters is
the heart and courage of the team that wants to win a national championship the
most.

Alabama has the best
defense in the country and 15 national championships in its storied
history. The Tide has reached the BCS
Championship game or a CFB playoff semifinal five times in seven seasons. That is the epitome of dominance.

I disagree with those
who claim Michigan State advanced to the semi-finals solely due to a flagging
Ohio State.

All four teams—Clemson,
Oklahoma, Michigan State and Alabama—fought bloody battles during the regular
season and deserve the pedestal upon which they have been placed.

Since Hillary
announced that her husband would be joining her on the campaign trail, people
have been debating whether it would be prudent to attack her husband’s sexual
misdeeds in order to indirectly attack her.

It’s about directly
attacking Hillary for the way she treated the women involved in her husband’s disgraceful
escapades. Hillary Clinton claims to be pro-women, yet has actively worked to
ruin the lives of so many of them.

David Martosko, US
Political Editor for The
Daily Mail, published a report about an interview that Kathleen Willey
gave to Aaron Klein Investigative Radio
which is based in Tel Aviv. Willey’s interview
came after Hillary’s incendiary remarks in Cleveland during a campaign appearance
in which she comparing treatment of women to that found among terrorist groups.

“We expect that from people who don’t want to live in the
modern world. But it’s a little hard to take coming from Republicans who want
to be the president of the United States,” Clinton said. Willey is adamant that the former Secretary
of State is the one who should be named and shamed for conducting a witch hunt
against her husband’s many sexual harassment accusers.

“Her tactics and the
things that she set in motion against all the women like me, the ones you have
heard of and the ones you haven't heard of, and the ones who are so scared that
fled the country, are terrorist tactics like I've never seen before.”

“I went through them. I
lived through them. And I know exactly what I am talking about. She is the war on women. [Emphasis mine] I don't care what anybody says,” Willey
insisted.She repeated her
oft-heard claim that Mrs. Clinton orchestrated a media campaign to destroy her
credibility after she accused the then-president of groping her in the West
Wing of the White House and putting her hand on his genitals. That smear offensive,
she has said, also included calculated PR offensives against fellow accusers
Monica Lewinsky, Paula Jones and Gennifer Flowers.“She put it all into
motion,” Willey said on Sunday. “She was the lead person on that. She was the
one in charge of the ‘bimbo eruptions.’”

“Bimbo
eruption" came out of Hillary's mouth,” Willey told Klein. “And Betsey
Wright's mouth. And she called Monica a ‘narcissistic looney tune.’”

Willey also attributed
to Hillary Clinton a line that was made famous by James Carville, then a
consultant to Bill Clinton's presidential campaign, who later worked on
Hillary's 2008 presidential primary bid and has been a contributor on CNN and Fox News.

Responding in 1996 to
the accusations of Paul Corbin Jones, Carville mugged for CNN's cameras saying, “If you drag a hundred dollar bill through a
trailer park, you never know what you'll find.”

There
wasn’t a soul anywhere in Clintonworld working harder and nastier by his side
every step of the way thanHillary
Rodham Clinton.

After
all this time Bill Clinton, the president with a “zipper problem”, is still the
only reason forHillary’s
existence in national politics.

Because
she married the right man, she was able to convert his success into a carpet
bagging stint holding down a Senate seat from New York and then a consolation
prize after her 2008 defeat in her run for the presidency by becoming Barack
Obama’s Secretary of State.

Tuesday, December 29, 2015

I like to think of myself as a pretty mainstream conservative. Other than, perhaps, my choice of a presidential candidate for 2016, I am used to my views being at least tangentially close to that of my fellow conservatives. That's why it's just a bit unsettling to be out here by my lonesome on this issue.

Consider poor Samuel L. Jackson. Okay, that was intentional. He's anything but poor. He could probably buy and sell me thirty times over, but he's catching an awful lot of flak for a comment he made that just doesn't seem all that terrible to me.

“When that thing happened in France, we were sitting there going, 'Oh, my God, these terrorists!' And I can't even tell you how much that day the thing that happened in San Bernardino — I was in Hawaii — how much I really wanted that to just be another, you know, crazy white dude, and not really some Muslims, because it's like: 'Oh, s**t. It's here. And it's here in another kind of way,'”

First of all, he was honest. A failing I suffer myself most of the time. And I can identify exactly with what he said. Before you assign a motive based on racial prejudice, think back to the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO. A black youth was shot in the street, apparently resisting arrest, but the identity (and race) of the police officer was not immediately revealed. I can very specifically remember thinking, "Man, I hope it was a black cop". Not because I wished any of the emotional trauma that so often accompanies even justified shootings, to be visited upon him, but because I did not want the race baiters and poverty pimps to turn what may have been (and was proven to be) a justifiable shooting into some occasion to stir up racial unrest.

I hoped it wasn't a white guy, because of the implications that would cause, not only in Ferguson, but nationwide. It was not racism on my part, but hoping there would be no cause for rioting.
If you are a pro-life conservative, you should be able to relate to this as well. Just recently there was a shooting incident in Colorado in and around a Planned Parenthood facility. Look me in the eye and tell me that it didn't at least go through your mind that you hoped that maybe the guy was a bank robber, chased into the PP, or "some crazy white dude" with no affiliation with any pro-life organizations whatsoever. You didn't want a righteous cause to be smeared by an unrighteous act.

Tonight at 9:00 PM in
a game carried on ESPN, No. 22 LSU
takes on unranked Texas Tech in the Advocare Texas Bowl. The last time these two schools met on the
gridiron was 58 years ago. LSU won that
game 19-14.

My friend Diogenes is a rabid Tigers fan
and even though I am a Bama fan, I’ll be rooting hard for LSU tonight. I feel strongly that the Bayou Bengals are
going to maul the Red Raiders and here’s why:

It’s only a little
more than a 4-hour drive down I-10 from Baton Rouge to Houston, so expect NRG
Stadium to be filled to the rafters with fans dressed in purple and gold. Tigers fans want their 2015 season to end on
a high note after losses to Alabama, Arkansas and Ole Miss.

The sports “experts”
claim the Red Raiders have an advantage over LSU with quarterback Patrick
Mahomes who is touted as “one of the best in the nation.” Brandon Harris stumbled badly for LSU towards
the end of the season but Head Coach Les Miles has had a month to build Harris’
confidence back up.

Look out for Leonard
Fournette to run wild against a Texas Tech defensive liNe that has more holes
in it than Swiss cheese. Heisman
committee, you’ll regret not inviting Fournette to your little trophy party in New
York. No. 7 is going to take his anger
out tonight.

If LSU’s offensive
line can avoid being penalized and protect their passer, they can wreak havoc
on the Red Raiders. Malachi Dupre
was one of Harris’ favorite receivers and though the advantage goes to Texas
Tech for wide receivers and tight ends LSU can be explosive.

Finally, LSU players
love ‘em some Les Miles. This will be
the first game for Miles and the Tigers since the dramatic regular-season
finale against Texas A & M in which Miles’ job status was in jeopardy
before athletic director Joe Alleva announced afterward that Miles would
continue at LSU as head coach.

I don’t dare predict
the final score of tonight’s game, but rest assured this game will be a slobberknocker
and that is, after all, why we love the game of college football.

Monday, December 28, 2015

It occurred to my while perusing the Vox-Dot-Com Twitter feed, after I had stopped laughing hysterically, that they may not be creating their farcical lie-infested headlines on purpose. It could be, however unlikely, that they simply just don’t know any better. So, for their benefit, I propose a comprehensive 5 step guide for purging the lies and mistruths from every single Vox headline. They won’t listen, of course, but fixing their headlines can be a fun game that all of us can play, once the methods are understood.

Fix One: Simple Inversion. Though the levels of convoluted anti-cognition, hypocrisy, double standard and dissonance may run deep in most Vox work, in some cases, it’s just a matter of inverting the statement to make it true. Say their headline says “New Study Finds That Sky Is Not Really Blue.” Invert it thusly: “New Study Confirms Sky Is Blue; Get Used To It.” Voila! Here’s another:

At first blush, this looks like a “How To” kind of headline, but it actually makes an implicit statement – a statement that’s so hilariously false that if you look at the reader comments, they contain nothing but 100% mocking jocularity about how Vox has spectacularly failed in this endeavor. Apparently, they’re not ashamed enough of that fact, because they seem to be bragging here about being able to debunk false beliefs without having it blow up in their faces. The true headline, simply inverted, would read: “Here at Vox.com, we try to debunk true beliefs, and boy does it blow up in our faces!” Here’s one more:

Not a topic I
generally gravitate to but The
Daily Mail published a piece that required mind bleach. It was a compilation of Granny Cankles’ 20
worst outfits from the past 50 years.

Apparently on Sunday The Ice Cube In Heels turned heads in
New York City wearing a hideous embroidered floral jacket she picked up in
Afghanistan that looks like a carpet. But
I was stunned, stunned I tell ya, when I cast my eyes upon a little number that
goes back to 2009 that the article described as the pairing of a white suit
coat featuring scalloped edges with a three-strand pearl necklace and a frumpy
black headband. Let me tell ya folks,
that bitch has a gigantic, yuuuuuuge, E-N-O-R-M-O-U-S ass.

Back in 2008, Hillary told Us Weekly that her revolting
get-ups weren’t her fault but a sign of the times. I suppose her farcical marriage to a serial
sexual abuser isn’t her fault either.

The 2015
Fabulous 50 Blog Awards are out.
Doug Ross, proprietor of Director
Blue notes, “These awards recognize a variety of blogs and websites
operating in the conservative hemisphere of the Internet, all of which have
worked tirelessly to promote conservatism, free market capitalism, fiscal
sanity, the sovereignty of the individual, and otherwise protect America from
the cockroach-like Statists—some in very unique ways.”

This site operates in
the conservative hemisphere mostly working tirelessly between power naps to
promote conservatism, common sense and otherwise stands guard over liberty in a
unique way but we were underdogs.

Despite being ignored
for The Fabulous 50 Blog Awards Proof, Grunt and Curmudgeon continue to wag
their tails because we know our “family” of readers and commenters come here
because we’re so cute and loveable. We
will unconditionally love you no matter what.

“What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in
the fight; it’s the size of the fight in the dog.”

“President Obama signed a law passed by Congress allowing
the IRS to refuse to give passports to U.S. citizens who owe the IRS more than
fifty thousand dollars. It’s home confinement. If Al Sharpton says he’s going
to leave the country if Donald Trump is elected president, don’t believe him.” — Argus Hamilton, December
27, 2015

Saturday, December 26, 2015

Honestly, the only
college football game I give a fig about is the New Year’s Eve game from the
Cotton Bowl between my beloved Alabama Crimson Tide and the Michigan State
Spartans. Meanwhile, there’s a seemingly
unending string of meaningless bowl games to be played before we get to the big
game.

As Christopher Gasper
noted in the Boston
Globe, “’Tis the season for irrelevant and superfluous college football
games.” Gasper compares bowl games to
Christmas tree ornaments—you always collect more than you need and piling too
many on turns the look from appropriately festive to annoyingly tacky.” The bowl games have literally been willed
into existence.

Nothing, in my
opinion, is tackier than two schools celebrated for their basketball prowess
playing in the most famous baseball stadium playing an inconsequential football
game.

I’m referring to the
New Era Pinstripe Bowl at Yankee Stadium.
The game will be aired at 3:30 PM on ABC. As a rabid Duke Basketball fan, I was
surprised at Duke’s fairly successful football season.

Because the time is fast
approaching when true college football fans will face desolate Saturdays
without their favorite sport, I will tune in to watch the Duke Blue Devils take
on the Indiana Hoosiers.

Who will win? The Hoosiers won their four opening games and
lost six games. Duke won six games to open
their season and lost four straight.

Some of us are just waking up from sleeping off our Christmas Eve hangovers and we’re noticing that our government has not been idle while we’ve been celebrating, and as usual, they’ve been up to no good.

Latest revelation from the Wall Street Journal is that the Obama Administration’s obsession with toppling the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria has been simmering a long time. In fact, even recently, attempts have been made to exploit disgruntled leadership inside his government to form a coup. This hasn’t worked out very well for the administration or its State Department, but that doesn’t make us feel much better about it. It’s only a matter of time before Obama and his SecState, John Kerry, figure out how to start World War 3 in Syria, as they’ve almost managed to do all around the Middle East in recent times. And since I’m still working on the holiday egg nog, I feel like putting my lament to verse.

The same guy who
became a laughingstock during the massively over-hyped opening of Al Capone’s
vault, compromised operational information by reporting the position and American
troop movements in Iraq on live TV, lied about being on the scene of “friendly
fire” in Afghanistan and shoved an Air Force rescue worker aside during
Hurricane Katrina so he could be filmed helping lift a woman in a wheelchair to
safety is pissed off at the president over the news that DHS
has begun preparing for a series of raids that would target for deportation
hundreds of families who arrived in hordes to the US. Among those to be deported include the surge
of unaccompanied minors from Central America.

Oh Jerry. By virtue of the fact they are here as
undocumented immigrants means they have broken the law. Secondly, the operations are to begin in
early January not Christmas Eve as you purport in your tweet. And lastly, these are illegals that had
already been ordered removed from the United States by an immigration judge.

We don’t really know
the true number of illegals who traipsed across our borders. Some say 5 million. Others say it could be as many as 11
million. Obama’s executive action to “shield”
them from deportation was blocked by the courts.

Executive Director
for The Center for Immigration Studies, Mark Krikorian, admits he is skeptical
about “whether the scale would be large enough to deter future illegal
immigration from Central America.” He
added, “If you have photogenic raids on a few dozen illegal families and that’s
the end of it, it’s just for show. It’s
just a [public relations] thing, enforcement theater.”

Rivera, who will go
on an irrational rant at the drop of a hat, will no doubt explode when FOX airs its new animated sitcom “Bordertown” which is set to debut on
Sunday, January 3, 2016. In the official
trailer, a device called the “deportation cannon” is ordered to be lit flinging
illegals back across the border from whence they came.

Thursday, December 24, 2015

There
have been countless adaptations of the Charles Dickens novella A Christmas Carol, but my favorite is
the animated Disney retelling of the miserly Ebenezer Scrooge whose bitterness
and venom kept him from knowing the true meaning of Christmas.

Through
his journey of self-redemption as he’s visited by mysterious Christmas
apparitions he became a good friend and a good man who honored Christmas in his
heart and tried to keep it all the year.

I
wish to thank Proofwho began blogging
here two years ago and Grunt of Monte Cristowho joined our
merry band of bloggers just last month for their support. I’d also like to thank blogger friends Woodsterman and Diogenes for their love.

A special thanks goes to all our readers and
commenters as well. You're the reason we labor to bring you content and stand guard over liberty. May God’s blessings
shine down upon you and your family this Christmas. May you feel joy in your homes as we
celebrate the birth of our little Lord Jesus.
May His shining Star mark your way.

Wednesday, December 23, 2015

Some of the brighter lights in the lefty media just can't help themselves. They keep doing stupid, reprehensible things. One might be tempted to conclude that they're not so bright, after all. But that simply can't be. Washington Post cartoonist Ann Telnaes has a Pulitzer Prize, so she must be a friggin' genius. Still, when she explained yesterday why she had drawn a cartoon depicting U.S. Senator and Presidential candidate Ted Cruz's two young daughters as performing monkeys on leashes, she offered one of the most unsupportable and tenuous excuses imaginable.

She claimed that putting his children in a campaign video - a Christmas video - meant that they were "fair game." She claimed this, at least in her one statement that was somewhat coherent, despite the obvious fact, known to everyone, that sitting President Barack Obama's two daughters have routinely shown up in campaign spots, photos and videos. Yet, they have never - not even once - been depicted as monkeys. The mind reels at the very thought of the universal outrage that would happen if it had been attempted even once.

This choice on the part of Ms. Telnaes was so bad that there's some doubt that her career will survive it. Last I checked, the cartoon was yanked and only Wonkette (no link - sorry) was defending her. Even Meghan McCain got enthusiastically behind Cruz on this one, and that's something I thought I'd never see.

But even as this is a spectacularly boneheaded example of media footicide-by-gunshot, I have to admire Ted Cruz for his crazy Jedi Master skills on this one. Fellow poll-topper Donald Trump has been getting lots of credit for deflecting fake scandals that normally leave other Republicans in messy disarray, but Cruz has proven himself to be a survivor of the Media's long knives in his own right. In the past, this has largely been a result of the wise strategy of staying on Donald Trump's good side - mostly. But in addition to staying close, I think we can conclude that Mr. Cruz has learned a few survival skills from Trump, and that's encouraging. Especially if he survives at the expense of morons like Ann Telnaes.

"A lot of people
are understandably reacting out of fear and anxiety about what they’re seeing
and Mr. Trump has a great capacity to use bluster and bigotry to inflame people
and to make them think there are easy answers to very complex questions. We have to make sure the really
discriminatory messages Donald Trump is sending around the world do not fall on
receptive ears," Clinton said.

"He is becoming
ISIS’ best recruiter," she charged. "They are going to people showing
videos of Donald Trump insulting Islam and Muslims in order to recruit more
radical jihadists."

There is no evidence to substantiate her lie
thatthe Islamic State has put him
in videos. There is, however, abundant
evidence that her diarrhea of the mouth is for political expediency.

When asked if she
would apologize, Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon said, “Hell no.
Hillary Clinton will not be apologizing to Donald Trump for correctly pointing
out how his hateful rhetoric only helps ISIS recruit more terrorists.”

The video, released
last month, used the image of former U.S. President Bill Clinton as a rallying
point calling him a “fornicator” and also includes Obama and George W. Bush.

The
Daily Mail
notes “Bill Clinton's place in presidential history is colored by his reputation
as a womanizer. Several women have accused him of sexually assaulting them,
including one who claimed he raped her in a hotel room.”

“And his presidency
nearly unraveled under the weight of accusations, later proven true, that he
carried on an affair with a White House intern while he occupied the Oval
Office.”

The Clinton campaign,
as of Monday, has not responded to requests for additional comments on the
recent emergence of an ISIS propaganda video in which her husband is
prominently featured.

Monday, December 21, 2015

Today, GOP presidential candidate and senator from South Carolina
announced he was suspending his campaign.

Graham consistently polled lower than his party rivals. After nearly six months on the campaign trail
it finally dawned on him that his bid for the presidency was an exercise in
futility.

Graham is a good and decent man who often found himself the butt of jokes
regarding his Southern manners. Back in
April 2011, David Burge AKA Iowahawk parodied
Graham’s upbringing, an excerpt of which follows:

“As
a lad in Charleston, I at first chafed whenever Mama would squire me to my
weekly instructions at Miss Buelah Fontaine's Palmetto Street Finishing Academy
for Young Gentlemen. "Oh, Mama, must I?" I would plead. "I would
much rather fish and hoop-roll and play mumblety-peg with the other boys."
But Mama—God rest her overbearing memory—remained insistent, for she knew that
under the stern tutelage of Miss Fontaine her son would grow into a true
Carolina Gentleman, deft in the social graces and ready to ascend the ladder of
societal respectability.”

“The
evidence of time has, I hope, proven Mama's wisdom. With every thwack of Miss
Buela's corrective switch, I soon learned the fine art of gentlemanliness; the
Windsor knot, the four-in-hand, the gracious bow, the waltz, entering one's
name on a dance card, the proper way to hold one's refreshments. By my 16th
birthday I was ready to make my society debut at the 1971 Charleston Boy's
Cotillion. Oh, how Mama and Miss Buelah beamed with matronly pride as I
promenaded across the ballroom floor with my escort (and second cousin once
removed) Miss Blanche Dwerryhouse. I like to think Daddy would have beamed at
my dashing waltz too, had he not been delayed by an emergency prior engagement
that magical Charleston evening.”

Graham
felt he could bolster his campaign by having his good friend Sen. John McCain
join him on the campaign trail. In my
estimation, that was a mistake since most conservatives see him as a RINO.

GRUNTINGTON POST [PARODY] - Already stung by several irregularities in the production of the December Democrat 2016 Presidential Debate Saturday night, ABC News has now been forced to address new photos leaked to various news services that raise questions about their handling of the debates. It now appears that the network faked a half hour delay and restart of the event after one of the candidates showed up visibly drunk and without her wig.

After exchanging initial pleasantries with the moderators, candidate Hillary Clinton downed an entire water glass containing, apparently, some kind of vodka, and she then became belligerent and disrespectful of a producer with a Semitic name, asking him for "a smooch, hunky Jew boy." After one of Mrs. Clinton's assistants apologized to the producer and lured the candidate off stage with an unopened bottle of Grey Goose, chaos was averted for a while until the event could be restarted at a half hour after the original airing time.

Sunday, December 20, 2015

The
Republican presidential candidates continue to remind voters that Hillary is
the only candidate who is under investigation by the FBI. Knowing this Clinton must be weighed down
with worry by what the investigation will reveal. Such anxiety would be enough to make anyone
take up drinking, but Hillary has always liked her booze.

I
was one of 17 people who watched the Democratic Presidential Primary debate
last night from Saint Anselm College because I take my citizen journalist
responsibilities seriously.

I
scoured the Internet today to find any bit of news that would explain to my
satisfaction why the Democratic front-runner was late returning from a
commercial break during last night’s debate.
Not a peep. Only speculation.

I
contacted our cub reporter Scoop and asked if he could do a little
snooping. Here’s the exclusive report he filed just a few
minutes ago.

CHAPPAQUA, NY—According
to sources close to the Clinton campaign, Hillary has taken to spending more
and more time in the can. Aides are
concerned that she may meet the same fate as Elvis who was rumored to have died
on the toilet due to “overexertion in the privy.”

The
source, who asked to remain anonymous, said that she clenches her fists, grabs
hold of the toilet seat and really bears down.
She has been seen with beads of sweat dotting her aged forehead after
emerging from the bathroom.

The
unnamed source allowed our reporter to hide in the corner of the guest house
living room where the former Secretary of State was doing a photo shoot for a
rather famous company that produces a toilet spray designed to trap unpleasant
bathroom odors.

It
was embarrassing to watch as Clinton had to do retake after retake. She kept saying something about “Irish recruiting
videos” and some guy she called “strump”.
Scoop snapped this photograph that pretty much ends any speculation
about the causes of her tardiness at the debate and the need for such a
voluminous number of retakes for the photo shoot.

NOTE FROM OUR ATTORNEY:Not a single word of this parody is remotely truthful unless, of course, you believe what a little squirrel wearing a trenchcoat and fedora with a press card stuck in the hatband says.

The Democratic
Presidential Primary Debate last night was strange. Not for the reasons you might think, but
rather because of what happened half-way through it.

ABC News and the DNC announced the start time as 8:00
PM. Instead the network kicked off the
debate a half-hour after the scheduled start.
One wonders why.

But that ain’t the
half of it. An hour into it, moderators
David Muir and Martha Raddatz announced a commercial break. After the break, the strangest thing
happened. The camera showed Clinton's center
podium without her behind it. Hmmm.

If her aides told her
to take her time because they wouldn’t dare start without her they were wrong. Muir said, “We believe Secretary Clinton will
be coming around the corner any minute” and launched right into a question for
Sanders and O’Malley who were on the stage.
Not long after, she took her spot on stage and sheepishly said,
“Sorry.” The audience laughed.

Once Muir’s question finally got to her, he tried to fill
her in on what she'd missed. "As you were walking in..."

During
the Las Vegas debate in October, Clinton made a similar “mistake” when she
decided to take a bathroom break. Was
she taking the Browns to the Super Bowl again?

Friday, December 18, 2015

Christmas is a comin' and the geese are getting fat...why Curmudgeon and Grunt want me to keep calling them that is beyond me. Something about how, after they'd split a bowl of spiked punch between them, they kept cracking up every time they said the word "gaggle".

Party's over. The girls have gone home. The band is packing up. I wanted Mannheim Steamroller, but Grunt and Big C insisted on 5 Seconds of Summer, but trust me, it was longer than five seconds!
Grunt is sleeping it off in the bathtub. The close proximity to the rest of the porcelain is literally no accident. He should be coming back around soon.

Curmudgeon is maintaining the fiction that she went to the movies today. She tried to post a live update from the party earlier, but couldn't get past "gaggle".

Gifts were exchanged. I gave Curmudgeon a ceramic pot I found on her front porch. She gave me a twenty she found in my wallet. Grunt used to be an electrician, so he gave the Hooter's girl shorts.

Several squirrels crashed the party. Literally. Curmudgeon knows a good glazier who works weekends. A little plywood should hold 'til then.

We taught Grunt the true meaning of "Don we now our gay apparel". Once he lost the feather boa, he was quite the metrosexual!

A good time was had by all. The only question on the lips of all the party goers was, "Do it again for New Year's??"UPDATED BY CURMUDGEON: Proof’s claim that my
going to see Star Wars The Force Awakens
this morning was a ruse is simply not true.
I think he is jealous that I am retired and can go see a movie on a weekday
in the AM. Oh, and don’t believe him
when he says he wanted the background music for the party to be Mannheim
Steamroller and that Grunt and I chose some other genre of music. There was plenty of Steamroller tuneage.

Grunt is still in the
tub sleeping off his bender. I know
because it sounds like a buzz saw in there.
Geez this guy can snore. If I’m
missing any bath towels I’m pretty sure it’ll be because he sucked ‘em in while
he snored. Gruntessa, his wife, is
thinking about glitter-bombing him.

Below is a photograph
I took when I arrived at Casa de Curmudgeon after the movie this morning. Notice the glass of scotch in Proof’s
hand. Mr. Peanut was there minus the
nutcracker that cracked his shell when he bit him at last year’s party. That’s Grunt in the center and beside him is
Daniel Craig who had a cameo role as a Stormtrooper in The Force Awakens. There on
the end is the Hooter’s girl who heard that Grunt and Proof wanted to meet her. Those wings…well, they were gone in a matter
of seconds. Grunt snarfed them down
bones and all. What a little caveman pig
he is.

Party-goers Diogenes, Adrienne, Mr. and Mrs. Woodsterman and Earl celebrated with us because we’re all
one big happy blogger family and just love Christmas.

A good time was had
by all and the Elf on the Shelf has much to report to Santa Claus.

We know you enjoyed the J.J. Abrams Star Wars phenomenon you saw this morning, Curmudgeon. And, er, we know this is your site and all...but me and Proof got together and decided to overrule your preference for squirrels in Darth Vader masks and space cantina cocktails for the annual staff Christmas party today. It's just that, we identify a little more with the J.K. Rowling Harry Potter prequel that's coming out in 2016. Let's face it. Star Wars has just about exhausted its quota of prequels. Let's give Mrs. Rowling a chance! Besides, we see more potential for party awesomeness with her title! We're working on the cocktail list now. So far, we have Knob Creek Bourbon, Slippery Nipple Shots, Bombay Boobalicious Bombs, Hendricks Headlight Martinis and Jameson Jello Jigglers. Can't wait for tonight! Merry Christmas, all!